The light at the of the pit lane went green and Practice Two was under wa at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, Var, near Marseille. The Alfa Romeo cars of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were the first cars back on track.
We know that Carlos Sainz will start Sunday’s race with that 10-place grid penalty after taking a new Control Electronics (that penalty could be increased if the Spaniard were to opt to take further new engine parts), but in the start of the second free practice session there were a lot of discussions going on in his garage and a new floor was being put on his car.
Kevin Magnussen and George Russell both had brief moments at the top of the timesheet, but Charles Leclerc immediately went 0.6s clear of the field. That was more impressive pace from the Ferrari driver after he topped the standings in the first free practice session for the French Grand Prix earlier today. In FP1 Sergio Perez managed to avoid the barrier and this time, Mick Schumacher was the one who pulled off a big, big save.
At the top, it was looking ever so tight between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc: the Dutchman went fastest by one hundredth of a second, but once more lost a bit of time in the final sector. Carlos Sainz then entered the fray with a very impressive lap: the Spaniard went 0.8s clear of Max Verstappen with a 1:33.322, but he was using soft tyres, while the Red Bull driver and Charles Leclerc had set their best efforts on mediums. Charles was then out on the soft tyres, improving on team-mate Carlos Sainz’s effort by almost 0.2s, which meant that the Ferrari cars were currently locking out the top two.
After just a few moments we saw another storming lap from Carlos Sainz, as the Spanish driver went 0.6s clear of his Maranello team-mate, who then improved to narrow the gap to a tenth. Max Verstappen, out on soft tyres, was third, half a second back from the Spanish driver. Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton’s first proper lap on soft tyres saw him go fourth, but he was almost a full second back from Carlos.
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George Russell then had a go on the soft tyres, and the Brit took fourth away from his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Russell was 0.7s back from Carlos Sainz’s leading effort, with Mercedes apparently unable to match the pace of their rivals.
As this session drew to a close, Carlos Sainz led the way on the timesheet with his 1:32.527 lap, with Charles Leclerc just behind him (+0.101). The two Ferrari F1-75 cars were followed by Max Verstappen (+0.550). George Russell (+0.764) and Lewis Hamilton (+0.990) occupied fourth and fifth, with Lando Norris (1.080) in sixth.
A solid second practice session for the Maranello team, with plenty of data collected by Charles and Carlos, as well as some encouraging pace especially on a flying lap, as Ferrari got ahead of the field in the low speed corners during today’s second practice.
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